The AI tools that crunch numbers, generate text and videos and find patterns in data rely on mass surveillance and exercise concerning control over our lives, the boss of encrypted messaging app Signal told AFP on Thursday.

Pushing back against the unquestioning enthusiasm at VivaTech in Paris, Europe’s top startup conference where industry players vaunt the merits of their products, Meredith Whittaker said concerns about surveillance and those about AI were “two framings of the same thing”.

“The AI technologies we’re talking about today are reliant on mass surveillance,” she said.

“They require huge amounts of data that are the derivatives of this mass surveillance business model that grew out of the 90s in the US, and has become the economic engine of the tech industry.” Whittaker, who spent years working for Google before helping to organise a staff walkout in 2018 over working conditions, established the AI Now Institute at New York University in 2017.

She now campaigns for privacy and rails against the business models built on the extraction of personal data.

And she is clear that she has no confidence that the AI industry is developing in the right direction.

Read More Here